Research focus

​It is now well recognized that burning fossil fuels and deforestation are major contributors to climate change, and that plant biomass can serve as an alternative renewable and carbon-neutral raw material for the production of bio-energy and other products made from fermentable sugars. Fast-growing perennial grasses such as Miscanthus, and trees such as poplar and willow, have great potential to become major energy crops for the future. In the production of bio-ethanol, lignin is the main limiting factor because it limits the accessibility of the cellulose microfibrils to enzymatic depolymerization.

There is enormous potential for improving plant cell walls by exploiting the available genetic resources and by genetic modification. This potential has remained largely unexplored. The major long-term goal of the Bio-energy group is to understand, through systems biology (involving metabolomics and transcriptomics), the biosynthesis, polymerization and structure of lignin, and how lignin biosynthesis integrates into plant metabolism and development. This will provide the fundamental knowledge that is necessary to breed for, or engineer, plant cell walls that are easier to convert to fermentable sugars. Arabidopsis, poplar and maize are used as model systems.

Background and history of GM poplar field trial

Check out the 'Poplar Files (pdf 2MB)' for background information and a short history of the experiment with GM poplar as a source for second generation bio-fuels.

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News

23/02/2018 - To ease the industrial processing of plant biomass into energy, plants are engineered to contain less lignin. Unfortunately, this intervention typically leads to reduced yield. Researchers at the VIB-UGent now discovered a way to overcome this problem

13/01/2016 - Wout Boerjan: The results are especially important in allowing the interaction between trees and bacteria to be utilised to obtain higher and more sustainable production of, in this case, poplar wood for bioenergy.

30/12/2013 - The results of a field trial with genetically modified poplar trees in Zwijnaarde, Belgium, shows that the wood of lignin modified poplar trees can be converted into sugars in a more efficient way.

15/08/2013 - An international collaboration of plant scientists identified a new gene in the biosynthetic pathway of lignin, a major component of plant secondary cell walls that limits the conversion of biomass to energy.

15/01/2010 - Wout Boerjan was named Forest Biotechnologist of the Year. IFB is recognizing Boerjan’s work. The jury also gave special consideration to the field proof with genetically modified poplars.

23/02/2009 - After an initial negative decision in May 2008, VIB recently received an authorisation to field test its genetically modified poplar trees in Belgium. VIB had appealed the negative decision at the Council of State, which suspended the refusal.

24/09/2008 - VIB gains international recognition for its poplar research program thanks to a considerable financial injection of 1.6 million dollar from Stanford University, the world-renowned American research university.

25/07/2008 - The Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, VIB, submitted a request to the Council of State on July 23, 2008, to suspend and quash the decision of Ministers Magnette and Onkelinx denying its approval for a field test of genetically modified poplars.

27/05/2008 - VIB has responded in disbelief to the rejection by the federal government of its request to carry out a field trial with genetically modified poplars. The government has thus disregarded the authoritative judgement of the Biosafety Advisory Council.

21/09/2004 - An international consortium, including VIB researchers, has succeeded in deciphering the first tree genome, that of the poplar. That is an important step in the research to make trees grow more quickly, or to make them easier to process into paper.